On the Other Side

A meditation on Luke 9:22-39, experiencing our essential self, and the sense of movement . 

I.

The story begins with crossing water.

The ark carried life through the flood until the rainbow appeared. The sea parted for the slaves on the road to freedom. The river parted for the refugees as they came into their promised home.

When God’s people cross water, you know something big is about to happen. On the other side, everything changes.

This time, Jesus got in a boat and fell asleep to dream his way across the lake. Halfway there, a storm came up and started tossing them around. His disciples were terrified; Jesus just kept sleeping. When they woke him up, he ordered the wind and the waves to calm down.

On the other side, they’re in Gentile country, a land of foreigners. As Jesus steps out of the boat into the still, gray morning after the storm, another kind of storm comes to meet him: a man with demons writhing inside of him. HIs naked skin is caked with grime.

For Jesus, this man is an outcast among outcasts: He comes from an unclean people, he is possessed by unclean demons, he lives among the unclean rot of the dead. Unclean means unsalvageable. He is cut off from God.

The demons would like to keep it that way. They know Jesus. So they speak first. The man shrieks and throws himself on the ground. Face contorted, he begs Jesus not to torture him. This word, “torture,” is about questioning: to interrogate, to cross-examine. In other words, don’t show us for what we really are.

But Jesus sees beneath the uncontrollable compulsions, the shrieking fear, the graveyard loneliness, the gaping loss, and the dead dreams. He sees a man in there. And he asks the man, “What is your name?”

“Legion,” he responds, because the demons overpower him, and they are many. Now, a legion is not just a word to mean “many.” It is a division of 6,000 soldiers in the Roman army. The demons overpower him, and they are an occupying power. They represent an empire that conquers and controls societies, reconfigures and divides communities, strips away the dignity and self-sufficiency of families, rewrites history, redefines truth, and rations out hope—until it drives individuals mad.

Jesus is the calm in this storm. His words are a clear pool reflecting what is real. He knows he will get to the true answer of his question.

The demons are afraid to go into the watery abyss—the waters of chaos, of creation and of grace. Water is the only way to destroy demons. So they negotiate; Jesus sends them into a herd of pigs. Nothing against pigs, but they were unclean animals for the Jews, and perhaps more significantly, the 10^th Legion of the Roman army, one of the most important, had the head of a boar as their mascot. So Jesus turns their demonic power back on itself. The pigs, perhaps wiser than we give them credit, expeditiously fling themselves into the lake. The water wins.

The swineherds see all of this and run off to the city. Then the people who live in houses and stay dressed all the time come to see the man who used to be naked and writhing in the tombs, whom they used to have to chain up and keep under guard, whom they used to be able to point at and say, “He is our problem. It’s so sad.”

Now he is sitting up, dressed and in his right mind. The people are afraid. They’d rather have kept the pigs. They want Jesus to leave.

But now the man who was called Legion knows his true name. And he goes back home to tell the story of how Jesus helped him remember.

II.

My story begins with crossing water, too.

I had crossed over the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the Amazon River to reach Brazil, where I was trying to learn to serve God’s people. I was about to cross over into another year of life. I had support and love, talents and opportunities.

But I was pummeled by storms of self-doubt and inadequacy. I was bad at living in community, bad at relationships, bad at faith itself. I felt naked and exposed. I was unclean, undeserving, unlovable.

On the eve of my birthday, I waded through torrents of tears all day. In the night I mustered the courage to knock on the door of a wise teacher. He let me in and told me to stand in front of a mirror. As I kept on crying he asked me, “Who do you see?”

I looked at my vulnerable, splotchy, contorted face. I could not see anything but the demons.

He asked me to look at my hands instead. He asked me to look deeper. To look with compassion. To look for beauty and capability.

And then he read me the story of the demon-possessed man. He finished and said, “What is your name? Not what the world calls you. I know they call you Sari. Not what other people want you to be. But who are you?”

I stood in front of that mirror and searched underneath the pain until I found my name. Then I went out and wrote this song to tell the story of how Jesus helped me remember.

III.

So many of our stories begin with crossing water.

The veteran crossed the sea after surviving the war, but never could feel completely at home in his skin anymore, after what he had seen, after what he had done. He was thrust into the mutilation of humanity that sustains great nations.
Some say he is homeless,
disabled,
depressed,
disturbed.
But Jesus says, “What is your name?”

The children crossed one final river with their family on their way to what they hoped would be safety, freedom, and opportunity, only to be torn from their parents’ arms and crowded into detention centers without soap or beds or space, without an adult to attach to. This is the one kind of trauma that no childhood resiliency is prepared to handle: the loss of all attachment figures.
Some say they come from the lowest rungs of society,
that they are illegals,
illiterate,
unhealthy,
criminals.
But Jesus says, “What is your name?”

So many migrants crossed waters in the history of this place. The first English settlers, the Africans forced on to slaves ships, the native peoples pushed across the country along a trail of tears. The waves of Irish, German, Jewish, Italian, Polish, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic people streaming in, by choice or by force, but making the best of what they have in a place that did not always see their humanity.

Now here are the descendants of these crossings, some of them here in Huron County, some of them poor, some in poor health, some insecure about the future, or ashamed of their limitations.
Some we would say are
addicts,
lazy,
crazy,
neglectful,
a burden.
But Jesus says, “What is your name?”

Today he is asking you this same question. You may not even realize if there are demons controlling your life. You can still point at the dirtier one, outside your city or your country, and say, “He is the problem. It’s so sad.” You may not realize you, too, are writhing in vain. That’s how demons work. They trick us.

But what’s your name? Not what the world calls you. Who are you? Search until you find the answer.

And then cross the water again. Find the one who is least clean and most hopeless. And ask them, again and again, until you hear the answer loud and clear,
What is your name?
What is your name?
What is your name?
 

In the Palms of Our Hands

This Sunday our service began with the children, whom I lead in a very impromptu play to recreate the triumphal entry of Jesus in Jerusalem from Luke 19:28-40. It was complete with palm branches, clothes laid over the path, singing “Hosanna to the king!” to a 9-year-old Jesus wearing a “Dude” sweatshirt or a 3-year-old Jesus with her hair done up waving like a beauty queen, and a wheel-mounted donkey getting stuck on aforementioned clothes. We had a ball.

 

Then we did a body prayer in response to Philippians 2:5-11 and after another stray song or prayer or two, we entered into the Passion story. Eight actors at each of my churches delivered a dramatic reading of Luke 24:14-23:56, which I recommend reading this week if you haven’t already. Before that, I offered a brief reflection on how our bodies participate in death and rebirth of this week—particularly, our hands.

In the Palms of Our Hands

“True religion is in the hands,” wrote Sam Portaro in his reflection on how we experience Palm Sunday with our bodies.[1] He points out that this Sunday is named after the palm branches people waved to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, but those palms themselves are named because of how the leaves are similar to the fingers that spread out from the palms of our hands.

True religion is in the hands. Not in what we believe or feel or think, but in what we do with our hands to help, to heal, to feed, to clothe, to rescue, to resist injustice, to strengthen others, to glorify God.

As we enter Holy Week, this week of remembering the final days of Jesus as he journeyed to the cross, we should all be asking ourselves: What are we doing with our hands?Today we may be raising them up to praise Jesus and shout, “Hosanah to the king!” On Thursday we may receive into our hands the bread of life and the cup of salvation and rejoice in transformative grace.

But if the going gets rough, will we let our hands droop in sleep when Jesus needs us to be alert and praying, like the disciples in Gethsemane? Will we grab a sword in our fists to use against our enemies, like one disciple did when they arrested Jesus? Will we take Jesus into our hands only to betray him, like Judas? Will we keep trying to pass off responsibility for the injustice being done to the innocent, like the chief priests, Pilate and Herod?

This week, we remember that Jesus, the living presence of God made flesh who came to dwell with us, gives himself into our hands. He was completely vulnerable with us in his life and his death, and he continues to give himself over to us. What will we do with the Lord of Love in the palms of our hands?

[1] Sam Portaro, Sense and Sensibility: A Lenten Exploration, 114.

What’s that Smell?!

The final sense in my in my Lenten series was smell, which is secretly my favorite sense, as I it is the only one in which I seem to be endowed with particularly keen abilities. The story we tell today is about a literally overpowering smell which I think is a metaphor for how we are called to live out our faith in metaphorically smelly ways—upsetting norms, being too vulnerable, giving with reckless abandon.

Scripture reading: John 12:1-8

I. The Power of Smell

Smell might be the least important sense. It seems frivolous compared to seeing and hearing. Yet it also produces the strongest visceral reactions in us.

“What’s that smell?!” we say with horror when we walk into a room where the cat has peed or something is rotting in the garbage. Smell alerts us to danger, toxins, and dirtiness. We talk about smelling a lie, and we wrinkle our noses at deplorable behavior.

“Ah, what’s that smell?” we say with a dreamy sigh when we come home to a stew simmering on the stove, or we are out walking and catch some sweet blossom on the breeze. Smell makes us forget everything else and draws us into delight, relationship, and pleasure.

Smell connects to our past with an ineffable power. If we have a piece of clothing that carries the scent of a lost loved one, it can make us feel like nothing else does that their physical presence is here with us.

Smell is the hardest sense to define or replicate. Maybe it is so powerful because it is the only sense that relies on a vital bodily function. We have to breathe air at all times. If air is the water we need to survive, then smell is the wine that makes life interesting.

II. An Extraordinary Amount

Smell was the primary sense at play the night that Jesus ate dinner at the home of his friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus, six days before the Passover. The smell that filled the house that night disgusted some, and delighted others. Rather than connecting him to the past, it connected Jesus to the future: it prepared him for his death.

During the meal, Mary got up and went to Jesus. This is the Mary who broke unspoken rules to sit at Jesus’ feet and learn from him. This is the Mary whose tears turned to laughter when Jesus called into her brother’s tomb, and instead of the stench of death rising from it, Lazarus himself rose, smelling as alive as ever. This Mary took an extraordinary amount of perfume, a pound of pure nard, and poured it all over Jesus’ feet. The house was filled with the smell: herbal, slightly sweet, musky and earthy.

It also smelled expensive. An extraordinary amount of perfume is extravagant. It is showy, luxurious, and scandalous. Not only the smell, but also the gesture, was too much. In this culture, women did not “let their hair down” in front of men who weren’t family. Not only that, but Mary uses her hair to wipe Jesus’ feet. This was too intimate, too sensual, too inappropriate.

I imagine Martha and Lazarus and a few others appreciating Mary’s act of reckless devotion. They would understand. But most of the disciples sitting around the table were probably thinking the same thing as Judas: “This perfume was worth a year’s wages! Why wasn’t it sold to give the money to the poor?”

It’s a reasonable argument. Even as we read this story now, we might shift uncomfortably in our seats at the extravagant waste. We might squirm at the sticky intimacy of Mary rubbing her hair all over Jesus’ perfume-drenched feet.

But there is a reason, I think, that the Common English Bible translates it as an extraordinary amount of perfume, not an extravagant amount. Extraordinary is not selfish excess. It is extra-ordinary, beyond the ordinary. It is unique and miraculous. It reflects the presence of Jesus. It is fitting to anoint a king who gives up his life so that love can reign boundlessly.

Yet extraordinary also contains the ordinary. It is the ordinary, but caught with its hair down, revealing the miraculous beauty in each person, each thing, each moment. Jesus embodies the ordinariness of life that is always exuding the scent of the divine.

It had to be an extraordinary amount of perfume. Calculating and measuring would not do. Judas calculated how much the sale of the perfume could’ve helped the poor not because he actually cared, but because he wanted to steal more from the money bag. We do our own stealing when we calculate our generosity to suit our ego or accomplish our own agenda.

Jesus responds, “You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” It’s a tragic irony that this line is used to justify not helping the poor. Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 15:11, which is from a long passage instructing the people of God to open their hand generously to the poor throughout the earth. According to one commentator, Jesus’ words could even be translated in the imperative: “Always keep the poor with you.”[1]

Jesus is reminding his disciples that they must continue their work of sharing with and showing up for the poor without ceasing. “You will always have the poor, so open your hand.” At the same time, they will soon lose this precious relationship with Jesus’ embodied self. “You will not always have me, so open your heart.”

Mary modeled for us how we should relate with the poor, or anyone in a situation of need. It’s not about calculating our impact or measuring out our generosity, but entering a relationship of respect and wonder for their extraordinariness. It’s about drawing vulnerably close to others. It’s about treating everyone as if they were as precious as Christ, and as deserving of extraordinary amounts of perfume—because they are.

III. Smelling Good to God

In recent years, church leaders across denominations are realizing that we should not have the mindset of doing ministry for marginalized people, as if they were objects that need saving—objects for us to act upon. Instead, we do ministry withthem, as partners in working out our salvation together.

Some people, like Mary, knew this all along. Another person who knew this before it became trendy is my friend Claudia, the mother of my stepchildren and an extraordinarily giving woman.

Claudia routinely notices homeless people she passes on her way to a restaurant, and saves some of her food for them. If she’s not eating out, she’ll still buy food for people who are hungry, even when her own resources are limited. It’s hard for her to pass by someone who is begging for help without stopping—and in a city as big as Bogotá, where she lives, there are many.

I’ve seen others who give coins to all the beggars they can as often as they can. What makes Claudia remarkable to me is that she doesn’t just give people food or money. She talks with them. She sits right beside them on the dirty curb and keeps them company as they eat. Walking down the street with Claudia, at any moment you might realize that she is a block behind you, sitting uncomfortably close to someone that most others would wrinkle their noses at. And she is honoring their extraordinariness.

Claudia teaches us something about what it looks like to go through life with extraordinary amounts of perfume to pour out. It looks like relating to people as equals, as collaborators in the Kingdom of God, no matter their class, their religion or lack of it, their race or culture, their mental health or history of addiction.

It looks like sitting down with people that have too much perfume on as well as people that haven’t bathed. It looks like staying close them and learning from them.

It looks like giving up extraordinary amounts of time, money, love—whatever we have to offer—without worrying about how we will make up for the losses or have enough for ourselves.

My proposal for a Lenten discipline this week is that we give up our habits of calculating and being practical, and instead give to others in ways that are recklessly generous and as impractical as anointing people with extraordinary amounts of perfume.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Practice random acts of kindness and senseless beauty.” I recently learned that it comes from an essay by Anne Herbert titled: “Handy Tips on How to Behave at the Death of the World.” Our savior will be crucified, our world may be dying, and the most important thing we can do is to be abundantly kind and senselessly beautiful with each other.

Each day this week, find something different to do: write a gushing card praising someone who is not celebrating any milestone. Leave too large of a tip. Take dinner to a neighbor. Sit next to someone you don’t know who is struggling and keep them company awhile.

Better than my suggestions, though, is to pay attention. Life will tell you what to do when the moment comes. Again, pay attention.

When we do anything that treats another as precious and extraordinary, it smells beautiful to God. It smells like Christ himself, bathed in the pure nard that probably lingered on him till his death, when he offered himself as a sacrifice for love. Respond to life this week with kindness and beauty that has no other use than to fill God’s house with extraordinary amounts of this perfume

[1] Lindsey Trozzo, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3993

Does anyone hear music and dancing?

On this fourth Sunday of Lent, we had the tremendous gift of hosting Richard and Susan Frey to lead us in a special service of musical reflection, playful dramatization, and multi-sensory participation in worship.

We united for just one service today at Harbor Beach United Methodist Church, with the other half of my charge, Port Hope UMC, and the Presbyterian Church of Harbor Beach. The sanctuary was as full as I’ve ever seen it as the gathered bodies leaned forward in curious, uncertain anticipation of each new way we would be asked to listen and respond to God’s Word.

They had us binding the law of love of God and neighbor to our wrists and our foreheads with heart-shaped sticky notes (Deuteronomy 6:6-8). They had us making wind sound effects, stomping our feet like an earthquake, and waving red, orange and yellow streamers like flames, until finally just the children whispered Elijah’s name as the true voice of God (1 Kings 19:11-13). They had us singing old favorite hymns about hearing and responding to God’s voice, joining in a call-and-response style hymn of singing, swaying, clapping and dancing when the Spirit says so, and they had us praying through song, too.

The gospel reading of the service today was the story of the Prodigal Son, or the Prodigal Child, as Susan told it, since sons and daughters, mothers and fathers alike have lived out this story (Luke 15:11-32). We heard the reading by acting it out: half of the congregation was the older one who stayed home with their parent, and half was the younger one who asked for their inheritance early and went away to another land to spend it all in unhealthy, ultimately unfulfilling ways. As we repeated the lines back to Susan, half of us embodied the feelings of the rebellious and then repentant younger sibling, while the other half took on the indignation and resentment of the faithful older sibling.

The older sibling, coming in from the fields after the younger one had arrived, hears music and dancing back home. Why on earth are they throwing a party? When the older one discovers that it is to celebrate the return of the wayward younger one, the older one cannot, will not join in the festivities.

How often do we hear the music and dancing of God’s overflowing, messy, scandalous grace and do not wish to join in the joy? We just resent that someone else is celebrating or being celebrated, and not us. How often do we not hear it at all, because we are too busy going about our business out in the field, filling our days with sounds that distract us, numb us, and define us by a certain social mold? What if we were to quiet all the rest so we could listen for the music and dancing of grace?

At the end of the story today, all of us siblings–whether we identify more with the younger or with the older, or both at different times–jumped up and danced and made a joyful noise with sparkly noisemakers and blowouts we had been given at the beginning of the service, to celebrate the return of the one who was lost and now is found. This extravageance, this vulnerability, this child-like joy, is exactly how God feels when any one of us come home to true life with God.

Throughout our worship service today in Harbor Beach we heard the persistent call of God on our lives in many creative and provocative ways. But God speaks to us every day. Are we attuned to listen?

This week, I invite you to a Lenten discipline of silence. I don’t mean that you can’t talk. Nor do I mean you should try to shut out all sounds, which would be way too much work and contrary to the spirit of letting God speak to you through your sense of hearing.

What I am proposing is that you cut down on the extra noise. Don’t listen to music or have the TV or radio on while you are doing other things, even the day-to-day tasks like driving, cooking, cleaning, or eating, moments when many of us are accostumed to listening to something.

Instead, add sound to your life only in a very intentional way. If you want to listen to a song, the TV or the radio, get comfortable and give it your whole attention.

I would further suggest that you make a practice of sitting down and listening to one song every day with your undivided attention. Maybe use head phones and close your eyes. What messages can you hear when you are fully present to the music? How might you listen to another person speaking with the same amount of attention? What messages might you hear then?

Add a little silence to your life this week. This way, in what you do listen to, you may be more able to hear the still, small voice of God.

Does it sound like music and dancing?

When Seeing is Deceiving

Today in our sensorial journey through Lent, my sermon took a hard look at how we see. We don’t always see as clearly as we think, especially not when we are constantly inundated with images. If we pull away from all our screens, news and social media feeds, we might find better ways to use our time to perceive reality.

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 55:1-9, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9,

I. The Dangers of Sight

Sight is our strongest and most useful sense. Other animals have different strengths: dogs in their sense of smell, bats in their sense of hearing, moles in their sense of touch. But we humans rely most of all on our eyes.

We’re so good at seeing that we can get haughty about it. When we say, “But I saw it with my own eyes!” we are suggesting that whatever we see is uncontestable reality. The phrase “seeing is believing” implies that sight provides the ultimate proof—or the ultimate truth.

However, our assumptions about how well we see exceed our actual capacity. Our eyes play all kinds of tricks on us. For example, you may have seen tromp l’oeil paintings, which create such convincing 3-D illusions that they startle or confuse us before they amuse us. They make people gasp at gaping holes in the sidewalk or snakes breaking through the concrete. Others might even have good uses, like a crosswalk that makes it look like the white bars are levitating off the ground to slow down traffic.

More sobering examples of how our eyes can deceive us are found with eyewitness testimonies. Innocent people have been convicted because someone pointed and said, “That’s the one! I saw him!”—then later DNA evidence proved otherwise. Biases, the rattling effect of trauma, and the power of suggestion can all make witnesses think they saw something they did not.

But beyond the natural fallibility of our eyes, modern media and technology make it easier than ever for our eyes to deceive us. We are inundated with news from an overwhelming array of sources. Even reliable journalism that presents verifiable facts usually has some bias in what and how they present. Then we have clickbait news websites that generate revenue by distorting or falsifying news, particularly the kind that inflames the self-righteous convictions of liberals or conservatives—and there are such websites to cater to both ends of the spectrum. There is a neutral and well-researched chart mapping media bias in the news that helps in sorting some of this out. But it’s still difficult to keep track.

We have memes that people share on Facebook and Twitter that distort reality through manipulating images or attaching a made-up story to a real picture. We have accusations of “fake news” hurled at fact-based news, and the label “alternative facts” attached to fabrications.

Liberals felt vindicated a couple years ago when they saw a quote from a People Magazine interview in ’98 in which Trump said that if he ran for president, he would run as a Republican because they were the dumbest group of voters. On further investigation, no such interview exists, and there is no record he ever said that.

Conservatives felt vindicated last year when they saw a picture of a black NFL player burning an American flag. On further investigation, both the flag and the fire were Photoshopped into a picture of a run-of-the-mill victory dance.

One of the classic tools of propagandists and advertisers alike is flash images rapidly before us to overwhelm our sense of sight. This makes it easier to influence us without us even realizing it. In a less organized way, this is happening to us all the time now in our waking hours. We are constantly inundated with a barrage of images on our TVs, computer screens, and phones. Too much seeing makes it impossible to see clearly. The sun is the source of all light and vision, but if you look straight at it, it blinds you.

II. Seeing the Sins of Others

The people who are listening to Jesus preach in our gospel reading today did not have screens flashing images at them, nor doctored photos and social media propaganda to sort through. But they also had problems with seeing things clearly. They were prone to assume everything they perceived was the clear truth, without questioning the reliability of their judgment.

Just before our reading picks up, Jesus had spoken to the crowd about how people can look at the clouds or the way the wind is blowing and predict the weather. “But why do you not know how to interpret the signs of the times?” he lamented. They think they can see events and understand what they mean as well as they can see clouds and know it will rain. But how many of us get news from sources we are likely to agree with?

The people in the crowd want to verify that Jesus is a source they can agree with. So they ask him: “What do you think about those Galileans that Pilate killed as they offered sacrifices at the temple?” They think, “He’s sure to share our outrage! He is a Galilean! Those Roman occupiers are evil! That or the Galileans did something to deserve it! Isn’t this a sign of the times?”

But Jesus responds, as he often does, in none of the ways they expected. “Do you think the suffering of the Galileans proves that they were more sinful than others? No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and minds, you will die just as they did.”

Then he adds another event they hadn’t asked about: when the tower of Siloam fell on 18 people in Jerusalem. This is not a tragedy of human evil but one of happenstance. With no bad guy to blame, we tend to resort to explaining suffering by blaming the victims. But Jesus responds here in the same way, “Do you think those 18 people were more guilty than anyone else living in Jerusalem? No! But unless you change your hearts and lives, you’ll die too.”

He refuses to complain against the oppressive power of Pilate, as real and terrifying as it may be. Nor does he recite the popular belief that when people suffer it is evidence of unfaithfulness. Before all the images of suffering flashing in his listener’s minds, as they try to make sense of it and figure out who to blame, he simply holds up a mirror so that they have to look back at themselves.

As Eric Fistler suggests on the Pulpit Fiction podcast, we cannot see others’ suffering and assume it means they have been sinful. Jesus himself died in a way that appeared to be a punishment for sin.[1] But we can know for ourselves that sinfulness will lead to suffering.

It’s easy to see what other people are doing wrong. We see CEOs of Amazon, Wal-Mart and Facebook amassing excessive wealth, and we blame them for poverty. We see poor people who are lazy and irresponsible, and we blame them. We see Central Americans crossing the border without permission, and we blame them for the immigration crisis. We see the government deny legal status to Central Americans who have no way to survive in their countries, and we blame the government.

All of these observations have varying degrees of truth, but we are part of the problem if we sit around complaining and assigning blame. We can only begin changing the world by changing ourselves. We don’t ignore the evil or wrongs that are being done, but we focus on changing our own hearts and lives. That is all we truly can control.

By looking within, and taking responsibility for ourselves, we begin to see everything else a little more clearly. We begin to see that God’s ways are higher than ours, as Isaiah 55 proclaims, and oursight can only offer us a tiny, blurry snapshot of the truth.

III. Seeing Our Own Sins

The traditional word for what Jesus is exhorting us to do is “repentance.” We usually think of this as taking stock of the bad things we do, and trying to stop them. That seems to be what Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to do in 1 Corinthians 10:1-13.

But here our vision is gets fuzzy again as it clashes with what we just saw. Isn’t Paul doing the opposite of what Jesus said? He is looking at the Hebrew people in the desert and judging that they did suffer because of their unfaithfulness. It helps to be aware that Paul is speaking as an insider. He is saying that the Corinthians, and by extension the rest of us, can claim the same spiritual ancestors and can see ourselves in their story. If we are honest with ourselves, we realize that we are also prone to the same temptations.

We too are prone to abuse the gift of healthy sexuality. We make it about our own pleasure and satisfaction without regarding how we affect others. We too are prone to idolatry. We make worldly things the center of our lives, whether it is wealth, pleasure, family, or the quest to postpone death. We too are prone to testing Christ. How often do we pray: do me this favor, and I’ll be more faithful? We too are prone to complaining and grumbling rather than being the change we want to see.

It is important to examine our weaknesses, our temptations, and the mistakes we’ve made. But interestingly enough, the primary image of repentance that Jesus leaves us with is not the bad things we should eliminate from our lives, but of the good fruit we could be giving.

There is a fig tree that had not given fruit for the three years since it had matured. It is not that it is a source of disease or damage to the vineyard. It is just that is useless. It is taking up valuable space and soil nutrients, and it is not giving any fruit. The owner, who calculates by standard expectations of productivity, wants to cut it down. But the gardener, who knows each tree, wants to give it one more year, to put fertilizer and loosen the soil around its roots and see if it still might bear fruit.

The threat of judgment is there, but the overarching message, as theologian Leslie Hoppe notes, is God’s abundant mercy [2]: even beyond the time that any normal person should’ve already been producing fruit, God continues offering grace through Christ, the attentive gardener who knows exactly what we need to flourish.

The Common English Bible translates “repent” as “change your hearts and lives.” This broader translation helps us understand repentance in a more positive light: a holistic transformation of our whole selves so that God’s light can pour out of our hearts and into our lives. It is not so much about stamping out what is wrong, but cultivating what is good and life-giving within us.

IV. Seeing Clearly

This change begins with a change in focus—which we use for a lot of things, but originally it means to focus the eyes. Jesus invites us to set aside our own vision, which is so often faulty and distorting, and trust in him to see clearly for us.

Isaiah 55 begins with a call to come get buy food and drink that costs nothing at all. The Israelites were filling themselves with what did not truly satisfy. We, too spend all this time, energy and even money filling ourselves with news and entertainment that does not satisfy. But we can receive for free what actually gives life. I’ve found that it somehow gives you more time, more energy, and costs nothing at all, when you spend time centering yourself in God.

I am convinced that we will see more clearly if we practice turning off the images, news flashes, opinions and analyses, and spend more time in prayer. Listen for how God is calling us to live faithfully and fruitfully in the midst of this chaotic world.

My suggestion for a Lenten practice this week is simple, but it may be the least popular yet. I am asking you to fast from it all. Social media, TV, movies, websites, newspapers—even email if you can! It’s time to get away from all the screens.

You wouldn’t want to do this every week. I’m not suggesting you live under a rock. We need to know what’s happening in the world to respond faithfully. But it can have powerful effect it has to do it for just one week. If you can’t cut out all those things, try cutting out at least one that you do on a daily basis.

What will you do with that extra time? Well, there is another kind of seeing that may not use your eyes, but it is the best way to discern truth in the midst of deception: prayer. Yes, good old-fashioned prayer! We don’t usually acknowledge how powerful it is. Or we only pray when we have a laundry list of concerns and desires for ourselves or others.

Pray this week for guidance, clarity, and transformation. Pray to be fruitful in this world. Remember that prayer is a conversation—you also have to listen. Remember that God’s plans are not our plans. But also remember that God is abundantly generous in forgiveness, in providing the nourishing, gracious food that we need to grow and produce fruit of our own. And all of this is free when we rest our hearts, and our eyes, in Christ’s presence. Thanks be to God!

[1] Luke Timothy Johnson, Sacra Pagina: Luke, 213.

[2] Leslie J. Hoppe, Feasting on the Word Year C Vol. II

A Touchy Subject

As we continue our journey through an embodied Lent, I talked with my churches today about the sense of touch and practices around movement and stillness. Through becoming more aware of how we move and how (if!) we rest in stillness, I believe we do the deepest work of creating peace in a violent world.

The sermon I preached today would not really be complete without hearing that song that I wrote to be a part of it. Fortunately, I was wise enough to ask my husband to make a video of it, so below you will find not only an edited version of the sermon text, but a vide of the song with lyrics after it.

Gospel Reading: Luke 13:31-35

I. The Power of Touch

Touch is such an important part of being human. Yet our experience of touch is fraught with complications. Many of our connotations with it are negative.

“Bad touch,” and “Don’t let anyone touch you,” we say to kids. The word “Touchy” describes something or someone difficult, impetuous, or divisive. Even the phrase “touchy-feely” is not usually a compliment—it suggests that if you touch people a lot, you’re probably overbearing, if not all-out creepy.

Yet we need touch as much as we need food and sleep. One study I came across found that the lack of physical touch at an early age was a major factor in predicting the likelihood of individuals who will have mental health problems or violent behavior later in life.[1] Another often-mentioned study by Sidney Jourard documented the average amount of times people talking in cafes touched each other over the course of an hour. In Puerto Rico, it was 180 times. In Paris, it was 110. In Florida, it was just twice an hour. In London, zero.[2]

In many cases, low-touch cultures have higher rates of violence. As any scientist would point out, correlation is not causation, and there are probably all kinds of exceptions to this rule. But it makes sense that not learning enough about goodtouch could lead people to resort more readily to the terrible touch of violence.

These were the things I was pondering this week when the news broke about the mosque shootings in New Zealand. Men, women and children had gathered on their holy day to pray. I don’t know how it actually happened, but I imagine them in the most vulnerable moment of Muslim prayer—when they are kneeling with palms and foreheads pressed to the ground. In yoga it’s called “child’s pose.” We are all children before God. Then fifty of God’s children were gunned down by a white supremacist who didn’t like sharing the same air with people he didn’t understand.

If only we weren’t so afraid to reach out and grasp the hand of those who are different. Then we could feel their skin that is the same texture as ours, even if it’s not the same color. We could feel the blood coursing beneath their skin that is always the same color as ours.

If only I could gather you under my wings, Jesus weeps. In a city called Jerusalem, City of Peace, which is wracked by violence. In a city called Christchurch, where neither Christ nor the church could stop our Muslim brothers and sisters from being massacred.

As people of faith, we weep with them, we insist on the sacredness of all life, and we wonder if there is anything we can do to make this kind of violence stop.  That question does not have an easy answer. But a starting point is to recognize that Jesus calls us to choose peace, even when it makes us vulnerable.

Because for the most part the people in our churches are in a racial and religious majority, choosing peace will never make us as vulnerable as it does for some others. But we can make a difference. We can start with something as simple as learning more about Muslims so that we don’t have misconceptions, or speaking up when we hear a disparaging comment about them.

II. Peace You Can Touch

Today, though, I want to focus on a deeper, more primordial level of peacemaking. It is what I originally planned to preach about today, and though I hesitated and wondered if it was too inward and insignificant in the face of all these huge social ills and tragedies, I realized it’s not. I believe this kind of peacemaking is at the root of our larger social and political conflicts. It’s the kind of peace that is created when we share goodphysical touch. It’s peace on a cellular level.

The way we live our lives in this world is often far from peaceful. We move too fast. We focus on goals and getting things done rather than processes and relationships. To remain efficient and move through the world quickly, we usually avoid connection with others. We avoid touching others.

All of this might seem normal and even necessary to function in our culture. But the culture we live in is a violent one. The overt violence of shootings is built on the covert violence we do to ourselves and to each other when we try to move like machines, to remain in control, to stay busy. We don’t stop to touch each other and feel our common humanity.

Jesus longs to gather us under his wings, to hold us close together, touching us as we touch each other and the distinctions between us blur. He longs to stop our frantic rushing around so that we can rest in his motherly care.

But we didn’t want that. We didn’t want to be vulnerable. We didn’t want to slow down and give up control. We didn’t want to admit how helpless and dependent we are, how much we need God’s grace, and how far gone we are on the paths of violence. We are so far gone that we are not really so different, or so far removed, from the people who would crucify Jesus, when all he wanted was to gather them under his wings.

III. Coming Home to Our Bodies

We have abandoned our house, Jesus laments. He may have been speaking of the temple in Jerusalem as a metaphor for the place where God dwells with us. But after Christ’s resurrection, the temple is our own body now.

When we are thrown off by something, we talk about needing a minute to “gather ourselves.” In this sin-sick, violent and harried world, we are constantly being thrown off from who we are truly called to be. So we constantly need to gather ourselves together, and let Christ hold us in stillness. Then we can begin moving again more conscious of our bodies, more gently, more lovingly.

Last week we talked about fasting from food so that we can stop mindlessly ingesting it, but appreciate how it nourishes us as spiritual beings. This week, I am inviting you to fast from moving so fast. Explore moving through life more aware of how God is touching you, and how you are touching others.

There are many ways you could do this. I offer you here a few suggestions:

• Spend at least ten or twenty minutes every day being still and doing absolutely nothing. Sleeping is something, so that doesn’t count! Set a timer. Try not to get too involved in your thoughts, but don’t worry about any meditation techniques of clearing your mind or letting thoughts go. It’s probably better if you don’t even consider it meditation. Just be still and know who is your God.
• As a complement to the first, or as a separate discipline of its own, take a ten or twenty minute walk every day. If you already do walk every day, this should not be a part of your regular routine. It should not be about exercise or fitness. Go very slowly, aware of each time your foot steps on the earth, of how your arms are moving, of how your breath comes and goes. It just about being aware of your body.
• Alternatively, you could explore a new way to move this week. Look for a yoga or aerobics videos to do each day, or just put on a song to dance to. Whatever you choose, don’t push yourself very hard or go too fast. Do it at your own gentle, ambling pace. If you’re one step behind the video, that’s how you know you’re doing it right. Low-impact aerobics and slower songs would probably be more conducive to this!

Whatever you choose to do, I would also invite you, throughout your days, to notice how, when, and whom you touch. Notice if anything changes in the experience of touching. If you feel inspired to give more hugs or hold more hands, follow that urge, though don’t forget to make sure first if that it’s what the other person wants.

The gospel’s invitation today is to gather ourselves into our bodies. This does not mean we withdraw and protect ourselves. Quite the contrary. Just as Jesus wanted to gather under his wings the very people who would crucify him, as we are present to our bodies, we expand and become more vulnerable, more open, more loving. We continue doing the work of healing ourselves and others and driving out the demons of violence today and tomorrow. Then on that third day, our work will be complete—when resurrection comes.

The Gathering

Jerusalem I love you
As only a mother can
You move with songs of violence
You’ve got blood on your hands

If only you would let me
Gather you under my wings
Everyone now in the belly of the whale
With your hearts cracked open and bleeding
That’s how you learn to sing harmonies
Weave the threads—we’re all red inside
Oh city of peace, give up your false needs
And touch the one you deny
It’s in the gathering
That you will find life

You don’t know how I love you
You shrink from my touch
You move so sharp and swiftly
My limbs cannot keep up

CHORUS

Stop what you’re doing, and be
Feel how you’re moving, set it free

I gave you skin and bones
A place for love to dwell
You abandoned your home
That’s no way to love well

CHORUS

[1]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10919363_Violence_and_touch_deprivation_in_adolescents

[2]https://www.heysigmund.com/the-remarkable-power-of-touch/

Surrender: A poem for the fast

At the prompting of a book I was reading on my recent spiritual renewal retreat [1], I wrote a poem that I have returned to in my mind during this week of fasting. It is about the tension between intentionally and decisively cultivating a certain kind of life, and at the same time giving up all control (even of your sense of self) to the moving of the Spirit. But it’s also about how something as ordinary as the food we eat each day can lead us into a wide new space of trusting God.

Surrender

For years
I have labored
with all earnestness
in the suffocating kitchens
of my soul
shoulders aching—the pots
are heavy, the movements repetitive
—trying to cook my masterpiece.

Today, I stepped out
into the snow
and breathed the cold air,
mouth agape, like a child,
and coughed.

My breath settled and formed
into manna on the stones
and branches, white like the snow,
and exquisitely sweet and subtle
in flavor.

I walked for hours,
eating what I found
until I was satisfied
and did not feel full.

I followed my tracks home,
back to the kitchen,
stirred the soup
a few times,
and smiled.

[1] Soul Vows by Janet Conner.

A Bad Taste in Your Mouth

For Lent this year, I am leading my two congregations in a journey of “embodying Lent.” At a time of year that we usually focus on denying the body, I propose that we can grow deeper in our spiritual lives by being fully present to the body and intentional about engaging with the sensual aspects of life. Each week worship will focus on one of the five senses and a spiritual discipline associated with that sense.

We started off this Sunday with the sense of taste, and the discipline of fasting. I have slightly edited the sermon I preached, “A Bad Taste in Your Mouth,” to share with you here.

I. What a Bad Taste Can Tell You

When we wake up most mornings of our lives, or when we eat a heavily seasoned food, we usually experience a lingering bad taste in our mouths. We are embarrassed by such bad tastes, and find them unpleasant for ourselves, so we naturally try to get rid of them as quickly as possible. We brush our teeth, or eat something tasty to wash it down.

We have this interesting idiomatic phrase in English: “That left a bad taste in my mouth.” We say this when an injustice or a wrong has been done, or when some good is ill-gained. It’s not something that comes from within us, but something that invades us from outside—like swallowing a bitter pill.

As with any other bad taste, we are tempted to get rid of these tastes quickly. But the taste of wrongdoing tells us something important. Before we wash it down, we need to be sure we are doing the right thing to get to that sweeter taste.

In Luke 4:1-13, we have an example of what it looks like to take the time to savor the bad tastes. This passage describes how the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, and he fasted there for forty days before he began his public ministry.

Fasting can actually give you pretty bad breath. Apparently, lack of chewing to activate the saliva glands makes your mouth quite stale. Though I can’t taste it on the rare occasions that I’ve fasted, my husband has politely informed me of this reality.

But beyond the physiological level, fasting reveals those bad tastes that you needto be aware of. It shows you what is truly life-giving and what isn’t. It shows you how much of what you consume is actually bitter.

Furthermore, what’s most important is often not what you consume per se, but the way you consume it. It’s quite possible to eat or take in the right things the wrong way, which is what Jesus teaches us in the way he responded to temptations in the desert.[1]

II. Fasting from something… For something else

Traditionally, Lent is all about fasting. That continues to be the primary practice that we associate with this time, even if we’ve turned fasting from meat into fasting from social media.

We usually think of fasting as a matter of denying the body so that we can be more attuned to the Spirit. However, I propose that Lenten disciplines are actually about being more present to the physical body, because it is only through it that we can have spiritual experiences of any kind.

In a book called Sense and Sensibility, Anglican priest Sam Portaro suggests that Lent is a time to “come to our senses” and be more intentional about treating our five physical senses not merely as means to an end, but as holy in an of themselves.[2] In this way, our spirituality goes beyond mere mental exercises; it interacts with the physical, tangible world in faithful ways. That is why I am seeking to take up Portaro’s challenge to have a sensual Lent. Which is to say, let’s pay more attention to our senses!

I’ll admit that fasting sounds like the least appealing of spiritual disciplines, and the it sounds quite a lot like old-fashioned denial of the body. But I am realizing that being present to our bodies actually requires some kind of fasting. Portaro explains it like this: “The limits of our mortality demand that we must often sacrifice one thing in order to obtain another.”[3] Especially in our over-stimulated culture where excess is the norm, we must cleanse ourselves of a constant barrage to our senses in order to take in what is truly good.

III. Delicious Temptations that Leave a Bad Taste

At the beginning of Lent every year, we are called from our over-stimulated lives in a culture that tells us we deserve to have what we need, what we want, and a little bit more just in case. We are called to go out with Jesus into the desert.

In the Bible, the desert can mean a physical desert, or any kind of wilderness—a barren place of dangers and chaos. It can also mean a spiritual place of trial and transformation. Therefore, we are called to a place where there is nothing to cover up and assuage our desires. Nothing is guaranteed. In the desert, we are bare, exposed and uncertain.

In Luke 4:1-13, it is right after Jesus’ baptism, and he is full of the Holy Spirit. That was the starting point: he didn’t fill up with other things. He left room for the Spirit to take up space within him. And that Spirit led him into the wilderness. Into a place that cut him off from all comforts and distractions to focus wholly on God.

Just when he is most full of the Spirit and most focused on God, that’s when the devil comes around. In Greek the word means, simply, “tempter.” The embodiment of temptation suggests that he turn stones into bread.

After fasting for forty days, Jesus is literally starving. He must have had an awful taste in his mouth—dust and blood and stale beyond belief. It must have sounded wonderful to have some bread to wash down that bad taste and finally fill his stomach!

But the idea of commanding power over what God created to satisfy his whims leaves an even worse taste in his mouth. That would lead him down a road of feeling he can and should fulfill his every desire, whenever he wants.

So Jesus responds with a quote from Deuteronomy: “People won’t live only by bread.” That is what Moses told the Israelites who complained about the manna that God provided as food while they wandered for forty years in the desert. That verse ends by saying they also live “on every word that comes from God’s mouth.”

Living by bread alone is trying to take control of the world for our own comfort and pleasure. But if this is our focus, something will always be lacking. Living by God’s word and trusting God’s grace gives us true satisfaction, even when we are hungry.

Then the tempter takes Jesus to a high place and shows him the world sprawled out below: fields, livestock, craftsmen and merchants, people coming and going, living in palaces or suffering under high taxes and violent oppression, some with illnesses or demon possession, rejected by their community. And the tempter says, “All this could be yours.”

If it were today, he would also see strip malls, factories and office complexes, people coming to church and going to McDonald’s, living in comfortable houses or in neglected, violent neighborhoods, while women are harassed and migrant children die in detention and people who can’t fit into the heterosexual norm are told their love is a sin. And the devil says, “All this could be yours.”

This would have sounded wonderful to Jesus. He came to save it all, to bring healing and life abundant. He should be in charge!

But then he feels that bad taste in his mouth again. Because the condition is that he would have to worship the tempter—which amounts to worshipping his own ego.[4] He would gain power according to the world’s ways, by lording it over others and forcing them to give him belonging and approval.

So Jesus replies, again quoting Deuteronomy, “You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” God is the only one who can give us true belonging and approval. When we try to get it from external sources, we will build our own egos, not God’s kingdom.

Finally, the tempter takes Jesus to the top of the temple in Jerusalem and says, “Throw yourself off if you are the son of God, because the scripture says that God will command his angels to protect you.”

That sounds wonderful, too. Jesus knows he faces risks to his security and his very life by speaking God’s challenging truth and bringing God’s disruptive healing and inclusion to all. If he could guarantee his safety, couldn’t he do so much more good in the world?

An important side note here: the devil uses scripture to make his case. Here we have an important lesson about reading the Bible, which is relevant to our United Methodist denomination’s protracted conflict over LGBTQI inclusion. Every act of reading scriptures is an act of interpretation. As people of faith we all respect the authority of scripture, but we do not all agree on how to interpret it. You can faithfully seek to understand it and come to different conclusions. You can also take a few lines out of context and do damage, as I feel has been done with the scriptures used to denounce LGBTQI persons.

So knowing scripture and being faithful are two very different thing.[5] When Jesus hears the tempter quoting scripture, he knows for sure that the bad taste in his mouth isn’t just starvation: it is the wrong way to do a good thing. Something is amiss in these appealing choices to be satisfied, approved of, and secure. He knows that he cannot protect himself from suffering and still do the vulnerable work of loving and saving that he is called to do.

So he replies, “Don’t test the Lord your God.” There is a vast difference between testing God and trusting God.

IV. Fasting as Trusting

We usually think of temptation as indulgence of something so pleasurable that it drives us to harmful excesses. But temptation is more than that. What makes it bad isn’t that it is pleasurable. What makes it bad is that we try to get at what is good in the wrong way. We want to cut corners, guarantee success, avoid conflicts, take more than our share. The root at all these temptations, as I understand it, is the human impulse to put our own control over trusting in God.

Fasting can help us get into space of relying more on God’s grace. It helps us be aware that you don’t have to get all the pleasure in now. You don’t have to shore up security. You don’t have to push for recognition of what you do and who you are. Trust that all you need to survive, and to be fully, joyfully alive, will flow to you.

There are many ways to fast, and most of the disciplines we explore in these weeks will in fact be a form of fasting, but the most concrete way to do it is through food, and that is the discipline I suggest for this first week of Lent.

Keep in mind that the point of fasting, in the understanding I have elaborated here, is to give something up so that we can experience something else through that sense more fully. Here are some ideas of ways to do this:

• You could actually, literally, not eat anything for one day of the week—at least not until dinner, perhaps. Try to spend this day in quieter ways, with space for prayer, reflection and scripture reading. You might be surprised at unique type of clarity and energy that not eating for a day can give you.
• You could give up adding extra salt to anything, or eating anything that contains added sugar. This helps you appreciate the flavor of fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, just as God they are.
• You could give up processed foods. An easy rule of thumb for this is not to eat anything that comes from a box or a can. I have chosen to do this one and take it a step further. I will be giving up anything that has added seasoning when you buy it—including salt and sugar. This might be complicated because it would include bread and a bunch of other stuff, but for only a week, I think it will be a good challenge.
• Another option that doesn’t actually involve changing your diet is to give up distractions while you eat. Don’t watch TV, read, text or talk on the phone, or get paperwork done. If you normally eat with family, consider eating together in silence, if that works for your family. I practiced this from Ash Wednesday to Sunday, and I found it does help me experience more fully and appreciate each bite.

A final note about what not to do. I am very adamant that Lent is not a weight-loss or healthy-living program. It is about spiritual discipline. Do not do something that you think you should already be doing the rest of the year. Do something different and strange—something that you would not want to do all the time.

Whatever you do, be aware of how your eating, or refraining from eating, can help you dwell with the Word of God. As Paul writes in Romans 8, the word is near you—it is in your mouth, so near that you can taste how good it is. Savor it and live by it, trusting God to guide you, care for you, and love you, even when hunger, rejection and hurt cannot be avoided. Let that trust be the sweet flavor that transforms the bad taste in your mouth.

[1]N.T. Wright, Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C, p. 8.

[2]Sam Portaro, Sense and Sensibility: A Lenten Exploration, p. 8-9.

[3]Sense and Sensibility, 11.

[4]Pulpit Fiction Podcast, “Lent 1C,” March 10, 2019. http://www.pulpifiction.com

[5]Pulpit Fiction Podcast, “Lent 1C.”

A Visual Meditation on the Weight of Winter(s)

As I was tromping through some snowy woods in Farmington today, trying to keep my fingers from freezing but enjoying the 16-degree chill to nurse a headache, I was thinking about how much I love winter. Even at this time of year, I’m happy when it snows.

I have terrible circulation and I am generally more comfortable in heat than cold, so I love summer just as much. I’ve often thought my love of winter has to do with growing up amidst the burgeoning awareness of the threat of global warming. I felt an existential dread when we had 60 degree days in December or when I added to my running tally of snow-less Christmases that spanned the better part of my childhood in purportedly snowy Michigan.

Whatever the reason, though, I am also aware that in this part of the world, more people than not find winter wearisome. Sometimes it’s just the inconvenience and cabin fever, but some are genuinely affected by the lack of sunlight and the oppressive cold, and find their spirits weighed down for longer than they can stand.

While it may not be winter per se for me, there have been seasons and situations in my life where it’s been a constant struggle for me to see the good and the beauty contained in each day. So I try not to be too strident or overbearing about my love of winter.

But I do want to share a visual meditation here in order to challenge others to see winter a little more how I do. It’s not because I want my preferences to win out, but because we find healing when we open ourselves to seeing the beauty that is right before us, even through bleary eyes and from under a heavy burden.

I know some of my fellow United Methodists are feeling like our involvement in our church is kind of like winter in March right now. Where is the beauty in this bitter, divisive, stagnant institution that we have given so much of our hearts and souls to? We keep shoveling the proverbial snow to clear a little space for radical hospitality, beloved community, peace with justice, and just plain old love–and that white #$%& keeps falling from the sky!

For others it might be depression, the loss of a loved one, living with an illness, the lived reality of racial and economic inequality, the breakneck pace of carbon emmissions. There are a lot of winters we are living in.

While I’m not trying to slap a Pollyannaish hope on these situations or any other, I do want us to pause a moment, wherever we are in these individual or collective winters, and try to see the beauty in what is before us. I offer these images I have collected as winter has worn on especially for those who can’t stand the sight of snow right now. May they serve as a reminder of the goodness that is present and the renewed life that is gestating even through the long, lean months of darkness. This is true, I believe, no matter how far away spring may be.

Morning Songs

I stumbled across this piece of writing in an old journal of mine recently. After a bit of editing, it became what I would share this past Sunday at my dad’s surprise retirement party, as a tribute to him. This one’s got all the senses.

I have just finished my first semester studying religion at an obscure liberal arts college in Vermont. I return to Michigan as summer is settling in, my head full of Buddhist philosophies of detachment and compassion, my heart in the throes of an impossible love affair. At the beginning of June, I pay a visit to my father. It is 2008: the year before my father will find love and companionship again, the last year of many he has spent alone.

I escape the city, the distractions, and my mother’s teeming house in Ann Arbor, where I am immersed in the complexities of almost-step-families, pets, body work clients, and my teenage brother’s dreamy worlds and fashionable friends.

I stop in Lansing to teach a songwriting lesson and then cut loose up to Hubbardston, the place I come from. I barrel down the enchanted, rain-broken roads at twilight. The manure off the lush green fields smells almost sweet to my homesick nose. The sun stumbles through the patchwork of clouds, unable to keep itself decently covered. As I draw closer to the farm, it starts raining again, just a few fat drops with the sun still exposing itself lewdly in the distance. The brown of the dirt road glows with the shuddering satisfaction of quenched earth. The green of the fields looks like it is whirling up the very breeze that blows into my car—a magic trick the plants have been practicing just for me.

When I get to the farm I talk with Dad about politics in the school system—teachers’ rights and the administration’s disgraceful neglect of students—and we listen to a recording of the concert we played with my younger brother last Friday. Then he heads upstairs to rest up for his daily ritual that begins at 4:00 AM.

I stay up till nearly midnight, suddenly charged with energy. My fingers fly across the keys of my laptop as I save drafts of emails to every single person whose unanswered letter sits in my inbox. There’s no internet here, but I can’t stop the poetry, the philosophical musings, the admiration and respect as it flows to people I’ve known all my life, people I’ve just met, people I’ll never meet again. I don’t know what’s come over me—usually, I am not so reckless in my love of humanity.

I am awakened early by my father’s routine. I slept in the walkthrough, so he comes and goes on his way to the shower or to close the windows he’d opened during the night to cool the house. I could have put my ear plugs in, as I do most nights lately, but I didn’t, and I still don’t, even as his careful footsteps keep rousing me from sleep.

I want to hear this ritual, to be a part of it somehow. I want to feel that I know my father’s daily life intimately, as if I had grown up with him. As if it hadn’t been fourteen years since I’ve lived in this house. I don’t mind being woken up. I love every moment of his footsteps in the hall, his shower running, his window and fan adjustments.

I never fall back into a deep sleep. About an hour after he leaves, I rise to do as my father does. While he is away teaching, I find myself playing out what I know about his ritual. I let myself feel like my father’s daughter, like it wouldn’t be so bad to take a lesson from him. Surely, I will replicate some of his ways without even realizing it sometimes. I might as well embrace this fully, approach it head on. Perhaps with acceptance of the fact, I will be more able to change the habits I don’t want to replicate—the things that I believe made my father suffer.

So instead of taking my breakfast to a sunny spot, as I normally would, I sit down at the old round oak table in the dining room. There, he has a cutting board that he takes his meals on, and a duct-tape-and-tissue-box construction to prop up his books and magazines. A metal reading lamp with one of those natural-light bulbs sits to one side. I prop up my book on the tissue box, turn on the lamp, and sit in my father’s seat.

For lunch, I take it a step further: I boil soba noodles and heat up a jar of his homemade buckwheat turkey sauce with chopped carrots and greens. I eat what my father eats every morning. He says it gives him energy as he goes forth to give his whole heart and mind, as well as his popcorn, bad jokes and deafening sneezes, to his special education students. He needs all the vigor he can muster to stay on his game, and be present to these rejected cases, the kids no one else knows what to do with.

This is a part of my father’s story that I do want to replicate. I want to eat buckwheat every morning so I have the energy to give myself to the rejected and struggling ones.

Between breakfast and lunch, I pray the way my father does. On my own, I have developed my own postures of prayer. I have become critical of the habit of bending before God, as if I am somehow unworthy of fully basking in glory. I prefer to turn my face up to the light. But today, I get down on the rug in my father’s living room, just as he does every morning at 4:00, and I tuck my knees under me and curl forward into a little ball. I rest my forehead on my clasped hands, and give thanks to God. I send God’s love and peace to those I love and those I don’t know and those I want to learn to love. I pray to be a better person, there in the humble stance of my father.

After lunch, I sleep on the couch the way he always does after big meals, or sometimes all night when us kids come to visit. He took the bed out of his and mom’s old bedroom awhile back, and left a painting job half-done in there. Now there are only enough beds for the four of us kids to sleep comfortably when we are all there. Dad moves down to the couch without giving it a second thought.

When I wake up, I walk to the woods out past the alfalfa field. As I know my dad has done countless times on his hermetic forest romps, I head to the pond, strip off my clothes, and jump in.

It’s a spring-fed pond, and the water has a few warm pockets on the surface, but it is mostly as cold as March. I swim hard through the cotton-like seed pods that have accumulated on the water’s surface. When I pull myself back up on the raft, I am surprised at how tired my arms have grown. I can barely lift myself up.

Dad is back from school when I finally tromp back through the fields, spurred on by the rumbles of thunder and the clouds coming in. After taking his own rest on the couch, he gets up and makes me breakfast for dinner. We sit down to a feast that reminds me of my happiest memories of visiting my dad after the divorce. The food is the typical culinary style of my father—overburdened with vegetables, free of red meats, a little zealous on certain seasonings—but something about it is exquisite. It tastes better than anything I’ve had in years. He makes scrambled eggs with carrots, broccoli and green onions, cooked just right and bursting with a buttery flavor, though I know there is no butter in them. There are strips of turkey bacon cooked in the convection oven, with a sweet tang to the meat despite their low fat and sugar content. There are fried potatoes with some tarragon and dill, that are just the right amount of greasy and salty.

For dessert, Dad puts on pancake batter made of fresh-ground buckwheat, oats and pears. We sit down to steaming cakes, me with butter and him without, and top them with yogurt and local maple syrup. The pears are tender and sublime.

I recall so many breakfasts Dad did up right for us when we came to visit. It was one of the ways I knew—in spite of all the distance, sadness and uncertainty in our relationship with him—how much he loved us.

After dinner, we talk more about the politics at the school, and about the kids he tries to stand up for. One autistic student has been writing a lot of stories with violence in them. The administration is trying to get him to stop, but my dad suggested that maybe this could be a constructive tendency, and the student could become the next Stephen King. They did not appreciate the encouraging remark, particularly since it was made in a meeting with the student himself present.

We turn to the topic of Christianity, and the things we respect about the more conservative Evangelical members of our faith, and the things about them that make us grind our teeth. We stand out on the wrap-around front porch, waiting for a rainbow to appear among the deep gray of the clouds. We discuss the church’s debate about homosexuality and the cultural contexts in the Bible. I find his views more similar to mine than I’d thought, or maybe we are both just going softer—more open to encompassing everyone’s heartfelt say in things.

Later we move to the near-dark parlor and sit at the piano. Dad plays a beautiful melody of a gospel song he is writing. He plays it like a loop track while I try to write a second verse, squinting in the dim. It feels good to try to come together over a song like that, to put my vulnerability on the line and sing out my half-formed lyrics as Dad’s fingers move over the keys.

Then he starts playing a song that chants the words, “How can I serve you?” over and over again. I sway on the piano bench and feel like I am in church. I feel like raising my hands and turning my face upwards, as if God were waiting somewhere in the dark gray clouds.

“I want to sing that song every day of my internship,” I say. I am going to be working at a social service agency in Detroit this summer.

Dad says it is a morning song for him—he played it every day while the kids ate breakfast when he was a student teacher. “Poor kids,” he laughs.

But before this we had taken a walk with the dog down Maple Rapids Road, through that same broken humidity of yesterday evening, the freshly drenched fields breathing with life. We spoke of love, of relationships, of the struggle to find the right partner and the struggle to stick together. We spoke of the joy of being alone but also the pain of it at times. We recognized that we all long for closeness. We talked about our family, about him and mom, about bad decisions and things falling apart. But we spoke with the detachment and compassion that comes from years of slowly chipping away at your heart’s hard places. I heard my father speak out of years of curling up face-down on the living room rug and praying to be a better person. I heard him speak out of years of standing up from that worn spot and going forth into the day to find some way to serve someone. I heard my father speak with a voice I wouldn’t mind taking after.